American PSN Beginning to Come Online Now - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 14 May 2011 / 5,901 Views
It looks like the wait is over for PlayStation Network fans.
According to a post today on the U.S. PlayStation.Blog, PSN in America is now coming back online. According to the post all users can now update their PS3 firmware and PSN password, both of which are requirements before signing back onto PSN itself.
The process to bring PSN back online is going to take several hours. The post includes a map of the United States which will color in areas and states as they are brought online. As of writing, no part of the map is currently filled in.
"Please note that these services will take a bit of time to be turned on and rolled out to the whole country," the post read. "The process has begun and some states are being turned on now, so please be patient as we reach your city and state."
A caveat was added in the post that updates to the map may actually occur slightly before coverage is completely restored to your specific area. No mention was made of other countries regaining service, though it's a safe guess that high-density markets will be the first areas brought online.
Let us know in the comments when your access to PSN is restored - though you'll probably be too busy playing Mortal Kombat and Portal 2.
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Ok now it says that PSN is undergoing maintenance when before I could connect this morning. Oh well, I guess Kansas isn't up afterall :(.
i can't be busy playing mortal kombat. i can't put in my online pass code to unlock online because the ps store is down =(
@rf40928
Would you mind actually reading my post? Or maybe that is too harsh. I believe you really do not understand the situation. In that case allow me to attempt to explain it:
Sony didn't lose any data as far as I know, nor their systems. The PSN likely was ready to run anytime. They deliberately took their perfectly working network down simply because it was breached. They didn't take a month to 'rebuild lost data' or to 'restore a backup'. Even if they had to this would be nothing to them because the problem is security related. So they did spend it on researching how people got in and to ensuring none of the used leaks remained, as well as to determine what was - or could have been - accessed.
To put it simply: this wasn't about setting up software or recovering data. Read my previous post for more details.
As for the new points you introduced:
The fact that 'anyone can be hacked' doesn't mean you can just leave your systems online when it's proven to be no longer secure, especially if your customers (and thus your company) depends on it. It's like leaving your doors unlocked because anyone can be robbed. Would you do that? I know I would not. I'm certain however your local bank would not do that having your money in there as well.
Hm... 'supercomputers', google up Folding @ Home to see what can be accomplished by distributed computing on 'consumer machines'. Not that a supercomputer is really useful what hacking goes, mind you. Only thing it would be good for is brute force cracking of passwords/hashes against which pretty much every system that's been online in the past 6 years (at least) is well protected.
Exploiting a leak, on the other hand, generally requires nothing more but a web connected atom netbook and one or more skilled people with way too much free time trying to understand the network and then trying to find a way in. A 'supercomputer' wouldn't help with that at all.
If you want to understand more of hacking or exploiting as well as prevention and damage control, do a google search. It's not boring at all: there are very nice sites which present you a few realistic (well, they were many years ago) challenges you can start on right away as well as a lot of theory to get you started on simple things like non-sanitized (or unescaped even) variables in queries, php globals, SSI, POST/GET data without sanity checks, etc, etc. In fact, you'll automatically learn some basic 'hacking' skills from retracing steps on a compromised system as well as securing a system.
PS: yes, this post is way too long again.
Well I'm in UK...i was able to update to 3.61..but still PSN remained not being able to connect...
@ dirkd2323
a company who cares lol please dont make me laugh at your ignorence, thanks to there inadiquate security mine and millions of other peoples information got compromised and no matter how secure psn is now the simple fact my information is now sitting on some hackers computer with the chance that it could be sold on the black market.
there are no dram queens just people who like me put a lot of trust in sony to keep my personal information secure which they failed to do, and taking note of the fact you turned a blind eye to this and carry on supporting an company that only cares now after allowing hackers to obtain millions of documents from psn and poe account holders your activly supporting the hackers them selfs.
you wont see me online as im going to withdraw my psn account and ask sony to remove my details from the playstation network, i will never trust sony again and i suggest if you do have an account with sony to do the same and just register with bogus information so if it does get hacked again youll have nothing to worry about.
I give Sony a lot of credit, they did what they had to dispite all the drama queens saying they were going to trade in there PS3 and buy a 360, a bunch of winners, They made PSN more secure, and they even restored everything except PS store, which you know this whole thing has cost a shit load of money, The PS store is where they make most of all there money on the network, its not like XBL where we have to pay to play online, Sony just as easy could of said we will have the network up all at the same time, but instead they gave us everything back but PS store, knowing there was not going to be any profit for them. Sorry all the drama queens but Sony is a company who cares. I am happy to be a Sony supporter, and be in the PS family, everybody enjoy , see you online !!
I downloaded the update and changed my password and agreed to the user agreement and now it's up and running. I live in Kansas.
up :) playing homefront online :) bye :)
@ rf40928
So Sony was just keeping it offline to loose money? If they wern't making substantial changes and upgrades they wouldn't need to "get the network back online", because they took it down themselves remember? It wasn't taken down by hackers. You are an idiot.
@lzkn
you have no idea what you're talking about ! Getting the network back online has NOTHING to do with tracing anyone's steps - because - 'if' they can trace the steps it could take MANY MANY more months still, if not longer .. which is why they hired more then one firm ( three total ) to help investigate this - because they still dont know how it was done and they still dont have all the evidence they need.
Anyone with enough man power should've had those systems up in days.. to say that YOU think its surprising they got it back up this fast ( months ) is PROPOSTEROUS. The number of customers they serve has nothing to do with this - they were compromised ( data was stolen )over hours -, not weeks, not months.. and they were compromised with computers that we all use at home - not a Super Computer by China's Govt.. My take is it took longer for them because Sony really didnt have a good plan for this because they never planned on being hacked ( Sony really didnt think anyone would do it ) ...therefore they didn't have a secure mirror of their entire system.. so they had to manually cross reference a trail of customers lost data .. Otherwise if YOU are getting a system back online with better safeguards it would take days maybe.. months - nope..
The truth is Anyone can be hacked with ANY safeguards, people have hacked the US Govt systems and guess what ? They have WAYYYY more safeguards then a Sony or a MS ! So anyone who thinks this extra time was spent making it hack proof is fooling themselves..
I think the PS store will be back soon, Now that Sony has the biggest part of PSN back online they can , just work on PS store, God so nice to have back, i know thats sad but so nice
@rf40928 "Anyone who understands networking knows it doesnt take this long to get ANY system back online securely"
Considering they had to investigate and recreate every step used to hack the PSN in the first place on a huge server farm I'm surprised they are this fast. It's not your average 10 computer network we're talking about. On top of that, the stakes are very high compared to 'generic' websites like VGChartz which could survive another hack or some downtime. So there's absolutely no room for guesses or unknowns. Sure, the fixes probably took a week or less, but until you know what to fix and are 100% sure you didn't miss anything you can't bring the system back online. Not even if it's one small trivial piece of the puzzle missing.
Try to imagine having to direct such a research on a compromised server farm counting thousands of servers world wide, and then declaring it safe knowing that if it isn't, you'll be responsible for the info of 77 million customers, losses for a few hundred publishers and perhaps the downfall of your division which would extend to publishers, stores and perhaps ten thousand jobs.
Then there was the issue of a very large scaled organized DDoS being possible. Even if your servers, routers and firewalls are up to defending against them other servers outside of your control are often not, blocking the routes to your servers which has the same effect as if your servers are overloaded: you're not reachable. This problem is difficult to solve as well and usually requires you to redesign parts of your network and working with your provider(s) (in Sony's case: a lot of them). Normally this can wait and be done without downtime in the coming months but seeing the imminent risk/threat I imagine they've decided to work on this during the downtime too.
All in all, a month is a short time for problems of this scale. Of course, Sony's networking department isn't exactly 'your average department which knows networking' either so I expected no less of them.
They brought it back to the states first because they have by far sold the most amount of consoles here then any other country in the world. Makes sense.
Awesome news BTW!
Up and running here in Vancouver Canada
still not working :(
yeah sorry my mistake... it didn't give me an error message when I tried to log in, but also did not log in for about... 6 minutes now?
no were not :(
So, in literally the only country in the world where XBOX 360 outsells PS3, they bring PSN online there first.
Forget them, bring back EU and Japan first.
what about australia do we get free games since were a pal region 2 n00bs
Baalzamon# So if you wont get free games? You americans are always getting the games on pss much cheaper.
dl the update change my pw and wham bam got on no problem in CA
Downloaded update a while ago, couldn't get online.
So my question is...SCEA STILL hasn't announced a free game deal like SCEE is doing. Are they honestly not going to give this to us in America?
Still nothing in France :( I guess I can take that shower...
Store won't be up til the 31st I think.
Been online for about 2 hours now...store still isn't up
Maryland
@dirkd2323
Have to agree. They seem to have gone slow to make sure this doesnt ever happen again. Odds are psn now will be much much more secure than wii and xbox by a long shot.
@rf40928
i know networks also, and a network with 77 plus million accounts on it, is one HUGH network, Dam right great job Sony, would you rather them get the network up in a week and it getss hacked again, atleast now we know its secure and it wont happen again. Thats what I care about, sometimes you just cant please people, give credit where its due.
here in holland we can download the update but noo psn stil:(
Good job Sony ?
I can only guess it took this long because a 'free' online system has less money in which to pay bigger teams to fix it as quickly as desired, because it certainly cost them millions. Anyone who understands networking knows it doesnt take this long to get ANY system back online securely .. I can see a week to reconfigure, maybe.. but more then that has to be lack of resources..
Just got on so cal
Right before Wii Pricecut. LOL
Yes! Just signed on!!!! Northern California here! =D
About time! hell yea, good job sony, hopefully nothing like this happens again, it was a boring three weeks without psn =P. I got the firmware update but psn isnt online yet for me. Good to see others online though! Anyway keep it up Sony!
i am on , baby playing on PSN i live in california, hell yah
The upgrade completed but still can't sign in - still get the 'currently undergoing maintenance' thing.
Live in PA.
Let us now what is the upgrades the new firmware brought.
Just updated my PS3 but i cant change my password until it connects to the network....well, im gonna order the Astro a40 wireless headset w/ mixAmp 5.8, im double exited now.
hell yah , its been a long hard wait, but I know Sony did the right thing and brought PSN back online when they were ready. Great job Sony
done system update but still no online rwhaaaaaaa
